2017FallCongratulations to Grace who not only got her methods paper on sampling for Bd published in MEE, but she also wrote a blog post about what it means! check them out: Imperfect pathogen detection from non-invasive skin swabs biases inferences of disease dynamics. Methods in Ecology and Evolution doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12868

Congratulations to Carly for publishing another of her dissertation chapters! this one shows how variable the effectiveness of skin microbes are in killing chytrid fungi under various temperatures - #NoSilverBullets: Amphibian skin bacteria inhibit fungal pathogens across genotypes and temperatures. Frontiers in Microbiologyhttps://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2017.01551

Karen worked with Deb Bower and colleagues from Australia to draw attention to the need for effective disease policies in PNG (and other areas) where chytrid is not (yet) present. See Amphibians on the Brink. Science. 357: 454-455.DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0500.

Carly got a job!!! She will be working at the Smithsonian Conservation Institute as a researcher, continuing her studies of microbiomes!

Congratulations to Carly - she just got her 2nd chapter of her dissertation accepted! It will be out soon here: Muletz-Wolz C, Yarwood S, Grant E H, Fleischer R, Lips K R. 2017. Effects of host species and environment on the skin microbiome of Plethodontid salamanders. Journal of Animal Ecology.

FebruaryCongratulations to Carly who published the first chapter of her dissertation! It describes the diversity and geographic distribution of anti-Bd bacteria on the skin of 3 species of salamanders in the Appalachians. Check out the early, online version here: http://aem.asm.org/content/early/2017/02/13/AEM.00186-17.long

Congratulations to Chace who was awarded a grant from the Chicago Herp Society to fund his work on Desmognathus!

2016OctoberCongratulations to Grace who published the first chapter of her dissertation on the response of the Tadpole Community to Chytridiomycosis Epidemic. We've described the effects on the adult community & species, but this shows (finally!) what happened to the tadpoles. Grace took our tadpole data collected during the chytridiomycosis epidemic at El Cope back in 2004 and reanalyzed the data, and showed the responses of the various tadpole species to invasion of the pathogen. Tadpoles disappeared in ~ 1 year; many may be gone completely as the adults have not been seen either. Adults of some species do persist, but abundances of tadpoles have been so low we have not been able to detect them. Only recently, 10 years later, have tadpoles of some been captured. Grace shows how much effort is needed to detect extremely rare tropical amphibians after their abundances are even further suppressed by disease-driven losses.

SeptemberA big welcome to Chace Holzheuser, a new grad student in the to the lab. He'll be working on a study of the southern Dusky Salamander.

AugustCongratulations to Dr. Carly Muletz who successfully defended her dissertation! A big thanks to Carly for running the lab and mentoring undergraduate lab projects. We wish her the best.

MayCongratulations to Dr. Grace Direnzo who successfully defended her dissertation!! Grace will be greatly missed around the lab for her sweet and generous personality, her statistical and R wizardry, her organization & management of all field and lab projects! We wish her the very best and wish her well in her NSF-funded postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Cheri Briggs, and in her postdoc with Dr. Elise Zipkin.

Congratulations to our awesome undergraduate researcher Jose "Gabe" Almario, who has been working with us for two years - first as a SESYNC intern on invasive pathogens, and this past year doing an Honors Thesis on the interaction of bacteria and fungal lineages.

Congratulations to our past REU student Chelsea Maguire, who just published her first paper in Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, the result of our REU project two years ago!

Congratulations to Karen who was selected as a Jefferson Science Fellow for the coming year. She will be based at the State Department where she will be working on various scientific issues that relate to international affairs.

JanuaryCongratulations to Ed Kabay, past lab alum, and our NSF RET scholar, who was profiled by Teach for America in this article. See more about Ed & Grace's work in Panama on our home page video!

October:Congratulations to Carly! She won the People's Choice Award in the 2015 U21 Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition for her presentation of her research on how favorable microbes can manage disease in amphibian populations. You can watch her video on YouTube.

August:We are super excited to welcome Dr. Ana Longo to the lab. She is an NSF Post-doctoral researcher who will be investigating chytrid fungal pathogens and amphibians.

We are equally excited to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Daut to the lab. She is an Sesync Post-doctoral researcher who will be investigating the role of trade on wildlife diseases.

﻿Congratulations to Gabe Almario, our Sesync intern who worked with us all summer on assessing vulnerability of US salamanders to Bsal﻿.

July:Congratulations to Carly who is the University of Maryland Representative in the Three Minute Thesis Competition! We hope you will vote for her video on the Salamander Microbiome in the finals!

Congratulations to Grace & Karen whose paper on Atelopus as possible superspreaders of Bd was published in PLOSOne here!!

January:Congratulations to both Nick and Grace on each getting a paper accepted for publication this month!

2013December:Congratulations to Brooke Talley for successfully passing her dissertation defense!

Congratulations to Carly Muletz for successfully passing her candidacy exam!

Carly shows us how it's done - see her interview here on her salamander microbiome research in this NPS video of all the George Wright NPS fellowship winners.

January: Congratulations to Grace whose lab video on the home page won the BEES Video Contest!

Karen was featured in a video here produced by Stanford Students Mia Diawara and Alp Ozturk, enrolled in the course "Communicating Science and the Environment" during the winter quarter of 2013. This was done in collaboration with the Leopold Leadership Program at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the environment and the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research.

Karen was featured in a commentary on the attempts to "re-create" the Gastric Brooding frog here.

Karen was interviewed on shifting baselines by the awesome Generation Anthropocene here.

Congratulations to Carly, who was awarded a 2012 National Park Service George M. Wright Climate Change Fellowship to study the effects of climate change on salamander microbial communities!!! The goals of this fellowship program are to support new and innovative research on climate change impacts to protected areas and to increase the use of scientific knowledge to further resource management in national parks.

Congratulations to Nick (U Alabama) and Nicole (Texas A&M) on their acceptances into PhD Programs!